alternate world

The happy CAN’T DO spirit

/ Faith Helma / Leave a comment

I’m sitting here like many of you in profound paradox. 

I am grateful and thankless. I wish with every fiber of my being that my kids could be in school; we have grown closer in the last 8 months and I see ways my son was struggling in school before. Now that we are together 24 hours a day, I SEE IT. I am truly tearfully grateful for this and at the same time, exhausted.

I am glad for the joy and distraction and energy of my children; I despair at the endless days of lockdown on the horizon.

I have a fantasy of what my life would be like right now if it were just me. I would be reading novels and sipping hot tea all day long in delight. I would be having long complex conversations with adults. I’d be casting spells at midnight and howling at the moon.

Sometimes I tip over into my alternate life and get a glimpse of the fantasy she is dreaming, of a world where two wild children are spouting absurdist poetry and asking questions all day long, where family meals are being cooked and candles lit and stories told around a big table, where spontaneous family rituals erupt, where she feels deeply needed. She (alternate world Faith) is deeply alone and longing for company. 

I think of how she must feel. She thinks I am living a fantasy life; I long for her fantasy life. I am suffering; she is suffering. We are suffering from the same thing. Two sides of the same coin.

I too am deeply alone and longing for company. 

I too feel unneeded, unnecessary. 

The things I am needed for are juice boxes, string cheese and legos. Hugs and anger and wiped butts.

Don’t you know who I am, I want to shout. 

It’s a good question. Don’t I know who I am?

Over in alternate world she doesn’t have the luxury of distractions. She is alone with herself, nothing to distract from that question.

I do have that luxury, the perfect excuse, I get to comfort myself with a game called, what I would do if I could but I can’t. 

Isn’t that a beautiful fantasy?

I would do _________ if I could but I can’t.

Maybe we could do this together. Write that sentence down ten times and fill in the blank with different things. Even if it doesn’t make sense! First thought best thought.

  • I would do some big crazy project if I could but I can’t.
  • I would do more baking if I could but I can’t
  • I would do pilates if I could but I can’t.
  • I would do pirates if I could but I can’t.
  • I would do moving to Arizona and living off grid if I could but I can’t.
  • I would do elephant taming if I could but I can’t.
  • I would do novels if I could but I can’t.
  • I would do taking  it to the streets and f the police if I could but I can’t.
  • I would do writing subversive romance novels if I could but I can’t.
  • I would do a big online retreat if I could but I can’t.

Now take everything you wrote in the blanks and write them as a list.

  • Some big crazy project
  • More baking
  • Pilates
  • Pirates
  • Moving to Arizona and living off grid
  • Elephant taming
  • Novels
  • Taking it to the streets and f the police
  • Writing subversive romance novels
  • A big online retreat

Does your list tell you something? I don’t know wtf mine tells me.

OK let’s try this, for each thing write I CAN DO in front of it, then list three ways that could be true.

I CAN DO some big crazy project

  • I just have to give up the idea of doing it well
  • I’ve done a big crazy project before and it didn’t even fail
  • Actually I’m already doing at least one, a little bit at a time

I CAN DO more baking

  • I’m actually doing more baking than I usually do
  • Baking is fun to do with the kids
  • We could branch out to bread and that would take all day, offscreen time!

I CAN DO pilates

  • I mean i totally can
  • Do I actually want to do pilates?
  • I would rather do zumba

I CAN DO pirates

  • I can definitely dress like one
  • In fact I already did last week
  • I don’t know what it means to do pirates but I feel I’m doing that

I CAN DO moving to Arizona and living off grid

  • I could definitely do this with my kids if I wanted to
  • We had a crazy idea of buying a trailer and driving to Texas to crash with family, we almost did it
  • I could still go somewhere super remote… the truth is I don’t want to give up the connections we’re getting living online right now, for all my mixed feelings about it

I CAN DO Elephant taming

  • I don’t want to tame elephants
  • I maybe want to free them from the zoo
  • I do love them. I could go hang out with them at the zoo, or watch more documentaries.

I CAN DO novels

  • I have read more novels in the last year than in the last seven years
  • The libby app makes it easy to check them out from the library and read on my phone
  • I could definitely choose to do this more instead of reading the news

I CAN DO taking it to the streets and f the police

  • I did for three days this summer, it was hard but I did it
  • The reason I stopped was not because I couldn’t but because I didn’t want to / was vaguely traumatized
  • I am ready to do this again when the time / situation feel right for me (there’s a lot to unpack here)

I CAN DO writing subversive romance novels

  • I could write two minutes a day
  • Stacey Abrams did it
  • Could I add this to something I already do every day, the two minute self portrait? After my drawing / freewriting time, I do two minutes of romance novel freewrite. This would actually be hilarious.

I CAN DO a big online retreat

  • I could get a sitter
  • I could rope my partner into kid care, he owes me
  • A big sigh comes out of my body when I contemplate doing this, not a happy sigh but a deep I GUESS SO sigh. I don’t think I want to do a big online retreat.

So what’s interesting to me is, it turns out half of these things are things I can do if I want to, and… I don’t want to. The other half are things I am already doing, or can do pretty easily.

I DON’T WANT TO

  • Do pilates
  • Tame elephants 
  • Move to Arizona and live offgrid
  • Take it to the streets and f the police

I ALREADY AM

  • Doing a big crazy project a little at a time
  • Living like a pirate
  • Reading novels
  • Baking

I CAN: Write a subversive romance novel two minutes a day

So I guess instead of saying I would do _______ if I could but I can’t, I could say, I don’t want to do _______. I could say, Wait, I AM doing that. I would do that if I could because I am.

I could say, I would like to do that. Can I? 

I want to pause here because I’m starting to sound cheerful and optimistic and lately I find optimism deeply annoying.

I don’t want CAN DO spirit. I want to lay on the couch muttering I CAAAAAAAAN’T while my children leap across my body onto a trampoline.

I want some CAN’T DO spirit.

Is this another paradox? I want to revel in what I can’t do. I want to whine and bitch and moan. I want to have a bad attitude, I cling to it, I savor it like a nice warm cup of something gross.

Have you ever done that? Tasted something gross and then you can’t stop tasting it?

That’s kind of how I’m feeling. Savoring this gross CAN’T DO nog. Somehow I feel like in my alternate world I’m drinking exactly the same thing.

Ok folks, this is my odd message to you on Unthanksgiving Day, on this strange shut-in celebration of harvest, in the last month of a very strange year of constant change.

May you take the spirit of CAN’T DO and run with it like my 3 year old does when I tell him he can’t do something. Nothing motivates him faster! Don’t throw your food! Don’t use my shirt as a napkin! Don’t throw caution and careful planning to the wind and follow your wild crazy dreams!

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It’s the end of the world as we know it

/ Faith Helma / 2 Comments

It feels like the end of the world. And I’ve been thinking maybe that feels not only fine, but comforting. Maybe I prefer it! Obviously there are things that are not great, like grief and terror and violence. We’re all spending a lot of time thinking about that. But what about the aspects of the end of the world that make my life better? I’m going to share some with you.

You can watch me talk about it here in a sparkly headband if you want to…

… LIST OF WAYS THE END OF THE WORLD IS COMFORTING…

  1. Who cares that I’ve had to put my career / calling on the back burner in order to homeschool my children, or “manage their online learning” which let’s be honest, is not my ideal job. I never said, hey when I’m 43 I would like to help my child click a cursor and type numbers in a text field to complete a math assignment while my three year old tries to tackle me for ten hours a day. I did not say that. But you know what? Who cares, because the world is ending.
  1. If the world is ending, then all I need to do at any given moment is figure out how to enjoy myself. Even if it’s impossible, that’s my only job. I can let go of any other problems. This is maybe my last moment. 
  1. There’s no need to fret about what it will mean in ten years if my kid can’t figure out how to manage his anger, because none of us will be here, because our planet might not exist. So I don’t need to worry about that.
  1. If my kids are being assholes right now, that’s understandable considering that the world is ending, and/or their mom is losing her mind. It’s a rational response.
  1. I don’t need to listen to any more parenting podcasts.
  1. I can let go of saving for my kids’ college, or worrying that I’m not saving, because there won’t be college.
  1. All that time watching cheeseball disaster movies was good preparation. I get to find out who my disaster movie persona is now. I can say, I don’t give a FRUITCAKE what you think, I’m going to shave my head and walk around in a tank top. Oh who am I kidding, I’m not Ripley. I don’t know who I am but I get to find out now.
  1. I can embrace my true destiny as a founder of a new world religion / order ala Earthseed, like Lauren from Parable of the Sower. I can speak my verses out loud and gather followers as we walk on the highway evading violent firestarting desperadoes. If you haven’t read Parable of the Sower it’s incredible for a lot of reasons, but one is that when I read it a year ago it seemed like science fiction, and now it seems like a roadmap to how we’re going to survive.

Lauren is ready for that moment with a theory of god and change and the destiny of humankind, and she isn’t shy about stepping up to it (and she’s only 15!) I don’t have to be shy either. This is what I have to offer. I can’t shoot a gun, I can’t set a leg that’s broken, I’m not good at building houses but I can create community and lead rituals and invite people into our safe haven.

If you don’t have a spiritual doctrine you’ve been crafting for 15-43 years, think about what you DO secretly want to do. No matter how audacious or ridiculous or ambitious it seems to be, now is the time to say it out loud. Drop the charade! Wear what you like! Change your name! Cut your hair! Say what you feel! It doesn’t have to be with exclamation points. 

  1. I’m tempted to say, why bother with the dishes or keeping the house clean… but I’m actually feeling the opposite. Over the weekend I deep cleaned and my 7-year-old was INTO it for no reason that I could tell (except that he’s a Virgo). To him it was a way to hang out and play with weird blue liquid in spray bottles, it was a science experiment, a game to put his world in order. Hanging out with him helped me see it like a game too. Why NOT see it as a fun way to pass the time? Might as well wipe the dust off all those surfaces and make them sparkle.
  1. Which brings me to: things surprise you when the world is ending. What you thought was important is pointless, what seemed pointless is what’s keeping you sane and grounded. Career, school, imposter syndrome: nope. Dishes, dusting, disaster movies: HELL YES.

Maybe the world won’t end. Maybe in ten years my kids will be dusting and whispering to themselves about what they’re going to do about mom’s anger management problem. That’s comforting! I’ll take that, if it means we still get to be alive in ten years!

I’m Coach Faith Ra and I also go by Faith Helma and these days I also am called by my alter ego name MOOOOOO-OOOOOOM which is the reason I am losing my mind and coming out here to my art garage to put on a sparkly headband and talk to you about the end of the world.

What does your new world look like? Let’s talk about that next time. (IF THERE IS A NEXT TIME).

I feel fine.

Saying what you want out loud is a magic spell

/ Faith Helma / Leave a comment

I wrote a post two years ago about accidental spellcasting, about how we are casting accidental spells all the time — we  use our imaginations to predict, reflect, reframe, process and distract from reality. We speak predictions of the future as if they were certain, we worry ourselves into a repeating loop, we tell stories to make sense of trauma and thus, shake off it’s hold on us. We cast spells without realizing it — plant the seeds deep in our unconscious mind for the kind of world we want to live in. 

I think of magic as PHYSICALIZING YOUR UNCONSCIOUS. It’s a process for taking your inner world — the symbols, images and associations that make you do what you do — and expressing it on the outside. It’s about changing the inner tangle of associations so your perception of the outer world can radically change.

One of the simplest, most powerful magic spells you can cast is saying what you want out loud.

I’m not talking about manifesting or positive thinking. This is not about crossing your fingers and wishing hard. This is not about expecting everything to work out exactly the way you want it to.

No – this is a different beast. This is following the thread of what you want where it leads. This is paying attention to the images and shadows and surges and obstacles that arise when you say out loud what you want. This magic is a sideways, circular, cyclical, practical process. When you say your unconscious desires out loud — when you embrace them, play with them, pretend with them — they take on a life outside of you. You don’t control them — you dance with them, ride with them where they lead. It’s about co-creating with your unconscious mind.

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If this sounds whimsical or daydreamy, think of a baby. Babies cry for what they want. They voice their desire. They WANT with all their being, without question, without hesitation. They want milk, they cry out for milk. And you know what? IT WORKS. They don’t manifest the milk, they cry until they get it (or mine did. Babies vary, obviously). 

This is basic human survival. And yet what we learn as we grow is to hide our wants. Especially if you were socialized as a white American woman like me, you learn to wait and see what everyone else wants before you say anything. You mold your wants to fit the group. You try not to want too much, so you’re not a burden, a diva, an annoyance.

Overcoming that programming is not easy. It feels scary and weird and uncomfortable — impossible even.

But it’s like any hard thing: you practice, and you get better.

You can practice saying what you want out loud. You can practice being honest about your YES and NO. You can revel in the tension, the thrills, the fears of wanting. You can WANT with all your night, even if it’s just for two minutes.

I have an example from my life. Seven years ago I was channeling my creative energy into theater — creating charged multimedia performances about big unanswerable questions, leading warm ups and trainings, co-leading with a group of strong artists who had been working together for years. Then I gave birth to my son Waylon, and everything turned upside down. What arose (slowly) from the ashes was a new idea — or more accurately, the old idea, with new wings. A new frame for what I had been doing all those years. What if another word for these skills is active listening, facilitating and … coaching? Could I be a coach?

Something about becoming a mother compelled me to physicalize this question, so I made a show to practice embodying a coach. That show was I Hate Positive Thinking, and over the course of a year, I went from calling myself a “coach” in air quotes to doing it for real, working with clients and leading workshops and classes. For over a year, I got up in front of people and practiced being this new thing I wanted to be. I tried it on. I performed my WANT with hundreds of people as witnesses and I felt the spell working it’s magic, night after night.

I am still practicing that want. I am still casting that spell. And guess what,  it’s still hard! It’s vulnerable and scary and feels weird to say what I want out loud. 

But we can do hard things. Try saying out loud what you want and seeing what happens as a result. Maybe nothing! That’s possible. But since change is the only constant in our universe, isn’t it more likely that SOMETHING will happen?

Queen of your Domain

/ Faith Helma / Leave a comment

Hello my Queens,

Do you mind if I call you Queen? Its been coming up a lot this summer season, this desire to be Queen. To be in charge, to be in power, to feel confident and comfortable in your skin.

It’s been a slow journey for me, finding my way towards sovereignty. For a long time I thought it made me stronger to be harsh with myself – to expect more, to not be happy with what I saw in the mirror, to critique, to push, to want to be better. I gave my inner drill sergeant free reign. Don’t go easy on her. She’s lazy, make her work harder. Don’t let her rest. 

As I settle into my 40s (I turn 42 on this month) I continue to learn how untrue – how unhelpful – those thoughts are. Being hard on myself doesn’t make me stronger. It freezes me, locks me in, blocks me, paints me into corners. Being gentle with myself frees up my energy, allowing me to do more, try more, open up more, learn more.

I continue to unlearn harshness, to learn how to love what I see in the mirror, to relish my mistakes. To ask, what if NO ONE was judging me harshly? It still feels like a thought experiment most of the time. Oh of course, I know that everyone is judging me harshly. But what if they weren’t? What if they were curious and loving and wanted me to succeed?

Still, I can finally say most of the time: I love myself, I love the way I look, I love the way I talk. I love my hesitations, I love my awkwardness, I love my sudden clarity, I love my ebbs and flows. This is a huge leap forward. 

I am finding my way towards sovereignty – towards being Queen of my domain.

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How are you Queen of your domain?

It’s another way of asking, how do you set boundaries? What are your rules? What do you do when someone invades, when someone breaks a rule, when someone crosses a line?

What kind of Queen are you? What kind of Queen are you NOT? You don’t have to have an answer, you can play with it as you figure it out.

You can do what kids do naturally without anyone telling them to do it: find a quiet corner, find some dolls or a hat or a car or a stick, and give yourself five minutes to play pretend. Or just walk into a coffee shop dressed as you are saying nothing, but thinking: I am Queen of my domain. I am Queen as I order this macchiato. I pick up my cup, I turn around, and everyone can feel that I am Queen.

Does that feel ridiculous? I know! It does for me too. We are adults and we don’t allow ourselves time to do this.

This is why for years I made theater – it gave me an excuse to play pretend.

This is why, when I wasn’t able to make theater, I freaked out – WHERE DO I GO TO PRETEND?!

But the good news is, you can pretend anywhere, quietly or loudly, in full color or in darkness. When you close your eyes and go to sleep, your body will insist on pretending. If you choose, you can write down your dreams so you have a log of the ways in which you deep down are pretending, and you can use your awake brain to decipher the code.

You can make a decision — a Queenly decision — to send some of your awake time pretending.

How am I Queen of my Domain? What would my day look like if I moved through every moment as Queen?

You can pretend your way through these questions, in your waking life or your dream life, and see how different answers make you feel.

This is one way that creative play is different from, say, talk therapy or straight up life coaching. You can ask a bold question and play with different answers – try them on to see how they feel. You might think you know the answer – but as you play with it, a surprising answer emerges. You’re not even sure you believe it! You play with it to find out what’s true and what’s not.

For instance, you might think you know what kind of Queen you are. But you find, as you draw her on paper, that she is much weirder or bolder or craftier or sneakier than you thought.

So that’s my labor for you, this month of July in the year 2019, when the sun is in Cancer and the moon in Aquarius.

  • Draw yourself as Queen of your Domain
  • Write what you see in the drawing
  • Circle five words and turn them into an incantation
  • Find an object that speaks to you and hold it in your hand
  • Recite the incantation when the moon comes out

I’d love to hear what you find out! My Queen loves to hear from other Queens. I believe we all strengthen and fortify each other – like a network of sovereign beings who build each other up, like a grove of trees reaching out their roots underground during a storm. We make each other more powerful as we ourselves grow in power.

Stretching Season

/ Faith Helma / 2 Comments

Hey beautiful dreamers,

I’ve been out of contact or a lot of reasons – long story short, this fall parenting has taken more of my energy than anticipated, and my plan to offer a lot of free webinars and launch an expanded round of the Creative Magic Workout in October got knocked to the ground like cheerios from the hand of an exuberant toddler, which is mostly a metaphor and also a pretty literal description of my day to day life.

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I’ve been a bit lost, in a bit of a dark place – a place where my trolls take over and drive out my sense of humor and incite a stewing toxic jealousy about everyone but me who has their life figured out. My poor wretched trolls, with their either/or thinking and their helpless rage. YOU ARE A LOSER. EASY FOR HER, SHE CAN BE A WINNER BECAUSE HAS EVERYTHING. (It’s no accident that my trolls sound a lot like Trump supporters).

When I’m lost and overtaken by my trolls, it feels like I’m out of control. I forget that I am the one who decides, that I am at the helm of this ship, that I can change course if I want to. Life feels overwhelming, unmanageable, something that happens to me, like projectile vomiting in the middle of the night (another metaphor drawn from my recent experience).

This feeling sucks, obviously. Let’s not sugar coat it. It’s hard. At the same time, it’s instructive.

It’s instructive because it is a feeling – an internal state – not objective reality. The thing I’m wrestling with is 100% in my head.

And knowing that is really helpful. I can feel the trolls taking over, but they have not totally taken over. I am aware of them. I know that the things they are saying are not true, even though they feel true.

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It’s also instructive because in that moment of overwhelm, when it feels like I’m trying to pull off the impossible, when I’m making dinner even though I cannot possibly make dinner, I can feel my brain and body stretching. I can feel the gulf between what needs to be done and my ability to do it, and I bridge that gulf and do it anyway.

My parents were in town and my Dad said on two different occasions I was muttering to myself, I don’t know what to do here, I don’t know what to do. That moment when you are suspended in the not knowing: that is what I’m talking about. That is when the growth happens. And that is also when I burst out laughing because what else can you do, when your kid has an attack of diarrhea in the parking lot and in the scramble to remove clothing and clean up the poop and wrap him in a baby blanket and get him in the car without anyone noticing, you step in the poop.

There is just something so GROUNDING about stepping in poop. And I am laughing as I say this but I am also dead serious. This is the grounding, grinding poetry of my everyday life, the way it stretches and stops me, the way it helps me laugh at myself.

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With that laughter comes space, comes distance, comes relief. The trolls step back and I remember that I am okay, this is a moment in time and it will pass, that help is all around me if I choose to see it. I am not the only person dealing with a sick kid! As Byron Katie says: other than what I’m thinking and believing, am I okay?

There’s a primal call to all this, a drumbeat of THIS SUCKS, an I CAN’T, a WHY ME that vibrates through my body as I remember how to laugh, as I remember how to feel like myself. It’s not about resisting that drumbeat. It’s about giving in to it, saying it out loud – OH MY GOD THIS SUUUUUUCKS – and then laughing as I give in to it.

I wipe the poop off my shoe and get my kid home and in the bath and into his pajamas and now he’s asleep (and so is his brother) and I make some tea and write this to you. Telling you about the tiny ways I find to survive. The poems I jot down, the shows I dream up, the ballots I cast, the ways I get clear.

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I am not offering the Creative Magic Workout this fall. I might in the spring. I might put it together differently. For now, I’m embracing the unknowing, the undoing, the unraveling. I’m choosing it. I resisted at first and then my body made it clear: that’s not what this fall is about.

I’m going to offer 1:1 sessions and have as many conversations as I can instead. I want to hear about what is blocking and trolling and demanding too much from you.

I also might start working on a show / book – I have been remembering that three years ago, that’s how I found my way out of the fog and reorganized my creative universe, by making a show about my questions.

This time my questions have something to do with the power of apology and atonement and reparations, with fragility and white flight and escape, with truth and reconciliation and songs about Saturn and joyfully upending fascism like dandelions busting through the sidewalk.

I will work on it the way I’ve learned to since becoming a mother: jotting down the ideas I have in the shower, writing in my iphone at 3am, inviting people to come and look at what I’ve made even though it’s a mess, drawing the costume I imagine and waiting for it to find me. Actually, this happened in reverse this summer when I found this incredible teal dress suit at my neighbor’s garage sale – I am waiting for its purpose to reveal itself:

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And the hardest, most important part: remembering that my creative work is vital and worthy of dedicated time and space.

Thank you for listening as I work my way through the darkness and richness and paradox.

I hope you are finding your way too.

 

p.s. It is not lost on me that EXACTLY a year ago I wrote a post almost exactly like this one. I don’t know what to make of that but it is evidence that what goes around, comes around, and that what you learned before will come in handy again in the future. 

Who is your failure hero?

/ Faith Helma / Leave a comment

Prince, of course, has been on my mind. It’s great to have heroes who show us what is possible – who shine like a beacon blazing a supernatural path*.

But I’ve been thinking — it’s also good to have heroes who show you what it looks like to stumble. Who blaze a trail of shit so you can say, hey, look at them – they made an ass of themselves, and I love them anyway.

So today I would like to encourage you to think about someone whose failure inspires you. Someone who has done something messy or ill advised or wrongheaded or ridiculous —  and despite all this, or maybe BECAUSE of it, they spoke to you.

For me, one of my failure heroes is Neil Young. He has many beautiful albums, but he also has some terrifically bad ones. One my favorites is Sleeps with Angels**. Half the songs on that album are transcendent and beautiful, and the other half fall flat. I don’t know why, but this is what makes it my favorite. It makes me feel like I know him. It lets me into his process. It lets me appreciate the easy magic of the beautiful songs even more.

Another hero for me is Jean Auel, the author of the Clan of the Cave Bear series. No disrespect to her, but each book is like 800 pages long, the characters repeat themselves, the moral lessons are easy to spot  and there are long, flowery, detailed sex scenes. I hope it doesn’t sound like I am criticizing her books because I LOVE them. I love that they exist in the world exactly as they are. They resonate with me and fill me with delight even as I am aware of how clunky they are.

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(This is not the first time I’ve asked, what would Ayla do?)

Is there someone or something like this for you – something ridiculous or shlocky or embarrassing that you love?

Study it, and take some lessons from it. What challenges could you take on from your hero?

For me, I can think of a few:

  • I could make an album of bad songs
  • I could go to an open mic and accompany myself on the 3 chords I kind of know how to play on guitar
  • I could sing covers of only the bad Neil Young songs
  • I could map out a novel of my ideal fantasy world
  • I could create a character who is a stand in for my ideals
  • I could let myself write a blog post that goes on way too long and says the same thing over and over
  • I could add a terrible sex scene to that post
  • Or I could come up with a series and every post in that series is a variation on the same thing. Like I could make this a series – the Failure Hero series – and just keep writing the same post over and over

What ideas do your failure heroes inspire for you? I would love to hear! (And if you want someone to help you embrace failure like the glorious hero that YOU are, contact me to set up a navigation session. It’s my offer of support and encouragement as you set out on your journey.)

footnotes:

* of course, it’s also good to remember that Prince did not feel like everything he did was a success. Apparently he thought he made an ass of himself in this incredible moment with James Brown and Michael Jackson – whereas I see someone effortlessly taking command of the stage and transforming it with ridiculous, sexy confidence. You never know how people are responding to what you think is a huge failure.

** this is weird: I am writing this in a coffee shop, and as I paused to gaze off into space and decide which album of Neil Young’s was my favorite, Razor Love came on.

SXSW recap: stories and tacos and dirty dancing, oh my!

/ Faith Helma / Leave a comment

Whoooooo boy. I got back to Portland a week ago, after almost a week in glorious Austin, Texas for the huge, sprawling cascade of ideas that is SXSW Interactive.

I’m still trying to figure out what the hell happened, and I thought it would be a good idea to do this publicly.

First of all, this happened:

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I led my crazy workshop, Creative Living in an Alternate World! It happened! People attended! We created alter egos and dream projects, we bragged about what we suck at, and we danced badly!

I can’t tell you how nervous I felt 30 minutes before. But here is the power of an alter ego: I put on that electric blue jumpsuit and headband and stepped into the room totally confident in my ridiculous abilities.

Confidence, as I’ve written before, is a moving target — but that doesn’t mean you can’t get better at channeling it when you need to.

So I feel pretty great about the workshop. It was not perfect, and there are things I’d do better next time — I’d do less exercises and take more time with them, and I would go ahead and embrace power point instead of dragging my easel and laminated Stevie Wonder poster around with me.

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But all in all, I prepared as much as I could, and the things I learned, I could only learn by jumping in and doing it.

And when I talk about embracing failure, that’s what I mean. I don’t mean that you don’t prepare or that you toss off something you care about. I mean, you train as best you can, but when it’s game time, you step in and play the game, ready or not. Because you love it, and you’d rather play and lose than not play.

Is this metaphor working? Maybe this one is better: you run every day, and on the day of the race, you run the marathon. And you come in last. The next day, you get up and keep running.

I like sports metaphors because they have a built in high drama structure. Life isn’t always so clear cut — you can’t always tell when you’re winning and losing or where the finish line is.

And in this case, to be honest with you, I’m not sure if doing my workshop at SXSW Interactive was the best fit. The workshop itself went great, but navigating the rest of the festival was exhausting. Kind of an introvert’s nightmare, and my attempts to live it up and party (in the McDonalds Lounge) proved fruitless.

There were amazing moments of insight though, like Brene Brown’s talk about vulnerability and applying the Shitty First Draft concept to our thoughts (which helped me reign in my social anxiety and question it lovingly and turn it around.)

Kate Hayward and Natalie Currie led a fantastic session on reframing networking as storytelling and listening, complete with this visual note-taker:

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And I went to a beautiful workshop led by filmmaker Amy Hardie around the themes in her documentary, Seven Songs for a Long Life (which I didn’t get to see, but hopefully will soon!) She had us pair up and ask each other four questions:

  1. What counts as a good day?
  2. What qualities would you like to be remembered for?
  3. What actions do you take that express those qualities?
  4. If you were given a life-limiting diagnosis today, would you change those actions?

Simple questions but INTENSE, man! Maybe it’s because I was on day 5 away from my family, but I ended up crying with the person I partnered up with (who it turned out was the music director for the film), then cried again when we all sang a song from the film together.

I was also surprised to realize that my answer to question #4 was: I wouldn’t change much. I have made some big changes in my life over the last two years, and for the most part (give or take some money anxiety here and some sleep frustration there) I am doing exactly what I want to be doing on a daily basis.

Speaking of which, my big fear — that leaving my son with my husband for SIX DAYS would be a nightmare and they’d be traumatized upon my return — proved to be entirely unfounded. They did fine. I did fine. My fears, as they so often are, were entirely in my imagination.

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that’s me and my boy

And you know what? For all my questions and mixed feelings, here is what I know: when I submitted my proposal to SXSW Interactive nine months ago, the failure I thought I was risking was how to make a big proposal and get rejected. Then when they accepted my proposal, I thought the failure would be having no one show up, or having it totally bomb.

But it turns out, none of those things happened. By risking failure, I stepped up my game and did something I did not think I was ready for: I flew by myself to a huge conference and got a roomful of strangers to put down their phones and dance wildly to Dueling Banjos.

Someone else wrote about their experience of my workshop over on The Verge:

We were told to envision the perfect world for our alter ego to exist in, and to imagine being very happy there. Then we were told to “breathe that vision out into the world; drop it; don’t make it happen.” We came up with projects we would never do, character flaws we would never try to correct, and people we didn’t feel like apologizing to.

And:

My favorite thing about Faith was that she yelled “DOES ANYONE WANT TO DO THE DIRTY DANCING LIFT WITH ME?”

Even though no one did the lift with me, something about this makes me proud of myself for standing confidently in the power of my weird ideas.

What would my alter ego do?

/ Faith Helma / Leave a comment

One of the things I love about acting is being able to step into and out of an alter ego.

I learned a long time ago that one way for me to be confident was to “play” someone confident onstage.

It took me a lot longer to figure out that I could use the same principle in my life offstage: that if I went into a situation with the right outfit / mantra / alter ego / attitude, I could fake my way into confidence.

I only learned this once life (in my case, having a baby) forced me to build a life outside the theater – and learning it is what propelled me to channel my theatre training into coaching. 

I tested this idea in my own life over the last month, as I performed my manifesto in the persona of a character who is basically me in a spectacular jumpsuit.

The outfit took on a life of its own, and to live up to the image it projected, I became another version of myself: someone who is sharper, bolder, more confident in her weirdness.

You can try this too, and you don’t have to go onstage to do it.

You can create an alter ego that is another version of yourself: stronger, clearer, more spaced out, softer, meaner, louder, grungier. It’s not about being better. It’s about what you learn about yourself when you step into another character. (Those of you who have children, or who remember your own childhoods, have probably seen this with your own eyes: when we’re little, we figure out who we are by pretending to be something else).

You can use this alter ego to test out what you want, what you think, what you fear, what you hate, what you think you’re capable of. You might be surprised by what you find out. (For example, I was very surprised to find out in the course of making my show that I love new age woo woo stuff once you take out the element of control, domination, betterment and perfection).

To create your own alter ego, here’s a good way to start:

  1. NAME
  2. OUTFIT
  3. MANTRA

I’ll walk you through it:

1. PICK A NAME

  • Look around until a random object catches your eye (here are some examples from where I’m sitting right now: stool, skeleton, iron, rainboots).
  • Pick a nickname you or someone you knew had in childhood (examples from people I know: Face, Boo, Kaa, Jaja).
  • Put the two names together (examples: Stool Face, Skeleton Boo, Kaa Iron, Jaja Rainboots). Voila! You’ve got an alter ego.

2. DRAW A TWO MINUTE SELF PORTRAIT OF YOUR ALTER EGO  

  • Set the timer for two minutes
  • Write the name on a piece of paper
  • Draw a picture of that character
  • Color it in with crayons or markers or a weird red pen

3. FREEWRITE FOR TWO MINUTES

  • Set the timer for two minutes again
  • Write what you see in the picture you drew
  • You could also answer these questions: Who is this person? What are their superpowers? What is their kryptonite? Where do they come from? What are they wearing? Who are they protecting? Who are they fighting? What car do they drive?
  • Look back over what you wrote, and circle 5-6 words that stand out to you.
  • Write those words in a list, then mess around with them until they become something like a mantra. It doesn’t have to make sense, but it needs to speak to you.

When I did this at our workshop last week, here’s what I came up with:

DURA-FLAME WAITHY

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Looking into the distance, wearing a cape of flame

So now what? What do you do with this alter ego?

I’ll tell you what: you practice stepping into those shoes. You channel it at boring parties or endless meetings or conversations at the grocery store. When you need to speak up, you think, what would my alter ego say? When you aren’t sure what to do, you ask, what would my alter ego do? And when you’re at a thrift store, you ask, what would my alter ego wear? And if you’re brave, you buy that piece of clothing and you wear it out in public and see what happens.

That’s enough to get you started! Let me know what you find out.

(And if you want to go deeper with this, come to the next Creative Living workshop or sign up for my 6-week coaxing program)

Try this: Invent your own superhero

/ Faith Helma / Leave a comment

This past Sunday, we had a lovely workshop on the theme of alternate worlds / alternate lives. There were only two of us (it’s hard to compete with a warm sunny day in Portland), but we inhabited our alter-egos (Lightbulb Helmet and Craesie Fleur) with aplomb.

If you’d like to do some world shaking on your own time, I invite you to try one of the exercises we did in the workshop: invent your own superhero.

Step 1: Get some paper and a pen, sit down and close your eyes. Let the image of a superhero float into your mind.

Step 2: Jot down answers to these questions (don’t think about them — write the first things that come to mind):

  • What is their superpower?
  • Where did they come from — what is their origin story?
  • What is their fatal flaw or weakness?
  • What kind of outfit do they wear?
  • What vehicle do they drive?
  • Who are their helpers?
  • Who are their enemies — who are they fighting?
  • What are they fighting for?
  • Who are they protecting?

Step 3: Draw a picture of your superhero based on what you wrote down.

Step 4: What is your superhero’s name? Do they have a catchphrase?

Splendid! Now if you want to, share your superhero with us on facebook! I would love to meet them.

Here’s mine:

JET DIAMOND

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Jet Diamond was born in a coal mine. Her mother was 9 months pregnant and working in the mine when it collapsed. They thought everyone was dead, but when the rubble cleared, Old Man Winters walked out with a canary on one arm and a newborn baby in the other. He adopted the baby girl and named her Jet Diamond. Right away he noticed that she had laser sharp eyesight, and as she grew, her ability to see through dust and hypocrisy grew stronger.

She wears all black glittering with diamonds, and is accompanied always by her canary, Blink.

She is extremely sensitive to coaldust and can only spend a little time in dusty, murky environments before the air gets to be too much for her lungs.

She rides in on her jet black motorcycle, sees through the shams and shoddy deals constructed by rich men, and helps the workers see what they can’t see and stand up for their rights.

Then she rides out of town so fast a thunderstorm can’t keep up with her.

Bonus step: If this superhero were to show up at your door for an emergency meeting, what would they need to tell you? Would they need your help? Would they have some advice for you? Would they alert you to danger?

I imagine Jet Diamond riding up after she’s had a long, tough battle. She’s worn out, and afraid she isn’t up for the challenge anymore. I make her a cup of tea and have her tell me the whole story. Then I tell her she needs to take a break and go easy, and she insists there isn’t time for that and she needs to save the world, but then she falls asleep on the couch and I take off her boots and lay a nice cozy blanket over her.

Aside from the fact that this scene that plays out in probably every movie ever made about a superhero (and I am casting myself in the faithful butler role), what does this tell me about my own life? Maybe I’m taking myself a little too seriously. Maybe the best thing to do is take a nap. Maybe I get a little carried away with the desire to save people and be the hero. It’s okay to take a break. It’s okay to do things just because you feel like doing them. It’s okay to let other take care of me sometimes. Or even better, to take care of myself.

But who knows, maybe next week I’ll see a whole different message.

Extra bonus round: using the exact same prompts in step 2, invent a supervillain.

Hey there! Is this right up your alley? If you’re in Portland, you can come to one of my free Sunday morning workshops and experience it firsthand! Or if you want to go deep, you can join a Creative Workout Group, or work with me one-on-one. 

Living in an alternate world

/ Faith Helma / Leave a comment

I am a big fan of speculative fiction — and I could easily write a long, long post about the rabbit hole of internet fascinations that appear when you google that term — but long story short, it’s because books and films and television set in another world or time give us a chance to step out of our actual lives and engage our imaginations. When we do that, we open up to possibilities in our present, actual world that we could not see before.

“God damn you all to hell!”

Or, as TV Tropes eloquently puts it:

One of the greatest strengths of Sci-Fi and Fantasy is that they can convey real-life situations in a new context by showing everyday problems, humanity’s greatest challenges, and even social commentary that’s ostensibly free of the prejudices and preconceptions that weigh them down in Real Life, giving us a more detached view of a given problem… as if we were aliens visiting Earth, or rather Earthlings visiting World of Weirdness.

In a way, it’s similar to why I got into acting when I was a kid. I was shy, but when I stepped onstage I could step into another persona (for instance: this one), and access parts of myself that had previously been unknown. That’s something any actor does: they put on a costume and do their hair and step into a heightened space, and become someone else for a while. I think this is something we could all benefit from doing.

In fact, we all do it a little bit: we get a radical haircut to jumpstart a big change in life, we apply darker, bolder makeup for going out at night, or we step into one persona for work, and then another one when we get home and change out of our work clothes.

I thought it would be fun to take this a step further, to stretch our brains and bodies and see what might be hanging around in our unconscious. So on Sunday I’m leading a workshop exploring alternate worlds and alternate lives. We’ll draw pictures of our alter egos, imagine our superhero and supervillain selves (and more importantly, their outfits), recreate/revise a seminal moment from our past, create a new world, and apply sci fi tropes like “gone horribly right” or “the [adjectival] man” to our personal lives.

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I am very curious to find out what happens. It raises so many questions and I can’t wait to see how we answer them on our feet: if you could invent a new world, what would it look like? What keeps us from inventing that world now? What can you learn by embodying your opposite self? What can you learn by embodying your worst or best traits, by taking them to their furthest extreme? If you changed one thing in your past, what else might change?

Come by and find out with me! Details are here.